3 trends shaping the restaurant of the future

Similar to early pandemic trends, there are 3 main factors at work?influencing restaurants:?convenience,?digital, and?safety. These catalysts overlap and influence each other greatly, but together they point toward a single, overarching mandate for restaurant brands to fundamentally change their business models.

In Deloitte 2020 study,?convenience?was clearly the most active frontier.?Safety?was an unquestioned imperative—a reaction, not yet a strategy—and?digital?was adapting quickly to those needs as part of a course of evolution that was already well underway. Now, it appears?convenience?has continued its rapid maturation and taken its place as a permanent fixture in the restaurant landscape.?Digital?still plays a greater, evermore-central role, by nature. And the most active front today,?safety—where measures were in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic—are giving way to more consistent and enduring approaches.

So, where does the restaurant industry go from here? Deloitte turned to 1,000 consumers who dined in a restaurant within the past three months of 2021 to take a fresh pulse of their attitudes and perspectives.

Ultimate convenience

What customers say The shift in focus to off-premises dining identified in last year’s survey remains strong. Consumers continue to favor experiences outside the traditional dining room that provide restaurant-style quality and variety, while balancing the experience with convenient ways to choose, order, receive, pay for, and consume a meal. Almost two-thirds (64%) said they don’t anticipate returning to their pre-pandemic habits of dining in restaurants within the next six months—forcing restaurants to tweak convenience strategies to adapt to changing customer demands.

How many order delivery/takeout at least once a week?

What habits are customers pursuing if they are no longer dining in? Takeout and delivery remain sharply higher—not only compared to pre-pandemic levels, but also linked to early pandemic levels seen in mid-2020. In addition, to ease of ordering and receiving a meal, speed remains a critical element of convenience.

Customers may be interacting with restaurants in different ways, but that doesn’t mean they are willing to compromise on the speed of service. The ratio of survey respondents who said they don’t want to wait more than 30 minutes for their food is unchanged at nearly 3 out of 4 respondents.

How restaurants can continue to evolve with the customer

The standards customers demand continue to shift, and restaurants need to renew their commitment to meeting those expectations. As the race to win the quickly growing off-premises market intensifies, brands should prioritize investment to help ensure the experience is efficient and simple for customers—even if that means fundamental shifts to operating models.

As Deloitte noted in our earlier report, restaurants may want to consider adopting kitchen models that feature dedicated spaces to prepare food for off-premises orders. Incomparable ways and for similar reasons, restaurants may opt to expand drive-thrus or shrink dining rooms to meet rising demand. They can also experiment with smaller store formats or ones with no dining space at all. Among the options for restaurant ordering, the most popular—the preference of more than a third of respondents (37%)—was the drive-thru.

Almost four out of five (79%) customers said they are likely to order from ghost kitchens, a trend which is 20% higher than a year ago and 32% higher than two years ago

These changes mean today the “smallest” restaurant isn’t a cozy bistro, but rather one you can’t visit at all. Restaurants should be finding an advantage in customers’ willingness to order this way—many ought to consider introducing single locations that provide more than one dining option or contemplate launching new ghost-only concepts in existing physical stores, all of which lets restaurants realize increased sales volume from less real estate.

Customers continue to demand delivery— but they expect quality when the food arrives. Traditional delivery methods that gave a pass to mushy fries and cold soup won’t cut it anymore. Three out of five customers said they expect the same food quality and freshness in delivery and takeout as they do in the dining room.

This means it’s up to restaurants to answer the call. Areas of investments and exploration could include menu customization to optimize for off-premises transit time, updated packaging technology for freshness, and new food preparation methods.

Frictionless digital experiences

Digital experiences make frequenting restaurants easier. In recognition of this fact, restaurants are making digital experiences easier to access, understand, and use. Not surprisingly, customers are flocking to this new way of eating out. Digital touches every aspect of the customer journey from ordering through preparation, payment, and delivery. When customers order their food for off-premises occasions, more than half consistently do so using a digital app.

For customers who prefer and still take advantage of on-premises dining, their preference for digital ordering continues to grow—even if that means less interaction with the traditional wait staff.

For customers who prefer to stay in their cars, four out of five people (81%) would opt for an automated voice system built into the drive-thru lane.?

It is obvious digital ordering is a priority, but through what channel?

Among customers who order off-premises, 2 out of 5 (40%) prefer to use a restaurant’s own branded website or app. Only about 1 in 10 (11%) prefer a third-party tool such as a food ordering and delivery platform.

The lesson here: If restaurants give their customers a way to order directly from them, they will do so time and time again.?

Not all digital advances touch the customer directly. The digital revolution is changing food preparation as well. As kitchen automation advances, it holds the potential to reduce errors and improve accuracy in addition to boosting efficiency and cost control. More than half of survey respondents (54%) are willing to order from a partially or fully automated kitchen. In response, some restaurants are planning to allocate some of the shrinking footprint to automation.

Payment for food is another avenue where digital is advancing. 25% percent of customers prefer a digital or contactless payment method to a physical one. Delivery was the preferred method of receiving food early on in the pandemic. During this time, restaurants innovated and shifted to contactless delivery. Last year, 57 percent of survey respondents used contactless delivery at least half the time, which has remained consistent, driving the number of consumers who are willing to receive food delivered by a drone or driverless car up by 10% over the past year. Technology is changing each phase of the customer journey, and it’s up to restaurants to make sure they measure up.

What restaurants can do?

Customers’ growing preference for digital interaction is one reason restaurants can inspire efforts to digitize. It can also be an effective way to reduce long-term costs through investing in technologies like automation and driverless delivery. Among the modernization tactics, brands should evaluate are investments in mobile applications and consistent cross-platform digital experiences.?

Loyalty programs will likely continue to play a key role in maintaining the customer experience in the restaurant of the future. Today, many restaurants are making plans to launch and revamp current programs— so that as traffic continues to increase, restaurants will be poised to capture and maintain loyal customers.

Though these programs are effective in the long term, the restaurant of the future should emphasize an effective program, as the real challenge is getting customers signed up. The average consumer participates in only two restaurant loyalty programs, so the brands that capture customers early may be the ones that hold onto them.

To meet demands, know demands

Safety, convenience, digital. These aren’t the only forces shaping the restaurant industry today, though repeated studies find they are the vectors of most dramatic change. The trend line for progress in each of the identified areas is bumpy as pandemic-related pressures continue to ebb and flow on top of longer-term imperatives.

The one constant is change and the importance for restaurants to adapt to ever-dynamic customer demands.

Credits: Deloitte Restaurant of the Future Survey, N = 1,000 consumers

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/consumer-business/articles/restaurant-future-survey-technology-customer-experience.html